Potlatch: what is the status with Flash / Adobe Air?

There is… When you are logged in on osm.org and have P3 started, and have view on a map area on osm.org, say zoomed in to level 17, and then select “Edit with Remote Control” then P3 loads the corresponding map area, ready to edit.
That button you ask for is the “Edit” button. That’s what you mean?

Another more indirect option is to use the ‘Share’ button on osm.org, copy the url to the clipboard and paste the url in the ‘search’ window in P3 (upper left).

Best Christmas present yet … Thanks Richard.

I’m running Windows 7 … Tried it out this morning, and surprised at how close to P2 it is. I did get issues with poor line quality, especially noticeable on tracks & Footpath (where dashed/dotted). Changing to the AIR CPU version didn’t help, but when I ran the program in Windows 7 compatibility mode, it was fine.

One last tip - I appreciate than when you open P3, the world map needs a lot of zooming in before you can edit … the simple answer is to create a bookmark of where you recently edit the most, and at the zoom level you wish … Next time you open P3, one click on the bookmark tab, and that takes you right to where you need to be.
You also have a choice of several bookmarks if you wish.

When the dust has settled, I’m sure Richard will entertain requests to fill in the extra “autocompletes” in advanced mode … I have a some to save my fingers, such as “byway_open_to_all_traffic”, and “level_crossing”, to name but a few :slight_smile:

Really glad to hear it’s working well for people! The version uploaded yesterday (Thursday 19th) has a few rendering optimisations, so it’s worth getting if you downloaded an earlier version this week.

Ultimately I’m intending to write some code for P3 to import presets/autocomplete from one of the other editors (iD/JOSM/Vespucci) as it seems daft to maintain several sets of the same thing.

The iD editor presets (feature names + tagging and preset fields for features) moved to here now: https://github.com/openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema/

I’m using it in Streetcomplete too, as source data for a dictionary of OSM tags ↔ localized name/terms. If this is what you are looking for (so, without presets that define which fields can/should be filled in for which feature), you may want to have a look at https://github.com/westnordost/osmfeatures , not sure how difficult it would be to port this to AS3.
I am refactoring the latter to use various indexes, so it is become more complex and more code, but on the other hand very fast.

I’ve been extracting the synonym information from iD since ages, see https://github.com/MarcusWolschon/osmeditor4android/tree/master/src/main/assets/synonyms and https://github.com/MarcusWolschon/osmeditor4android/blob/master/src/main/assets/synonyms/synonyms.de Tool for this https://github.com/simonpoole/preset-utils (Synonyms). Directly using the transifex translation files could be simpler though.

For simply extracting possible key/tag values: as a tendency I would use JOSM/Vespucci format, as there are only a handful of different “field” types (fixed key-value, text, check, combo & multiselect) that need to be parsed instead of iD’s baroque non-generic multitude of fields (I’ve written parsers for both), though you would need to handle JOSM “chunks” (that are reusable preset fragments) as a minor complication.

I already got used to Potlatch 3, a full month before Potlatch 2 will become history.

Still some wishes are left for autocomplete when a way is marked:
natural tree_row
natural scrub
tracktype grade

How about a list, that the user can work out for himself?

In the History of an element the user names of the listed edits are linked to the user profile - but the click on the name/link doesn’t work in P3.

Thank you Richard for your work and for OSMF granting the money. P3 seems so far to work fine with me. Same Look & Feel, very good.

I could subscribe these. Pleeeaaase Richard… :slight_smile:

I’ve just uploaded a Windows version that will work without having to install AIR first. It seems to work fine (though you do have to click through the warning about an unidentified developer) - feel free to try if you’re on Windows!

I can download the Windows version, but how can I launch it while browsing on OSM ?
Or alternatively: if I start P3, how can I point to a specific area ?

thanks for all your efforts,
I really appreciate it
(25+ years experience in software - but not on PC … )

Marcel

@openMvD,

  • start potlatch.exe (I needed to do that as an administrator, otherwise Adobe Air could not be found)
  • login on openstreetmap.org and zoom in to the area you want to edit;
  • near the EDIT button (upper left) on osm.org press the rolldown arrow and choose ‘Edit with remote Control …’ (**)
  • wait a few moments to let the osm data get downloaded
  • open the Potlatch window: ready for editing

(**) In your profile settings on osm.org you can set the preferred editor to ‘Edit with remote Control …’. After that you can go into edit mode directly with pressing the ‘EDIT’ button on osm.org

Hi Richard, thanks for this Windows version. If you don’t need Adobe Air for other stuff, you don’t need it now to install before using Potlatch3. Great work!
After some first trials I have a few questions / remarks:

  • the first time running the potlatch.exe program as a normal (restricted) Windows user the program refused to start with the remark that I needed to install Adobe Air first, while the program carries it’s own Air runtime. I’m running the exe from a zip-extracted folder as instructed. After that I logged in as an administrator and now potlatch.exe was running ok. Back as a restricted user potlatch.exe keeps running without error messages. So probably some first-run household stuff needed administrator rights. Do you recognise this?
  • there was a pop-up from the Windows Firewall asking permission to run potlatch.exe from a private network, or a public network, or both. No further explainations. I’ve chosen to allow only my private network and all seems ok, but i’m missing some more insight here what are the consequenses of the different options you can choose. Is it only security, or do you have more options when you choose for public network?
  • The Potlatch3 window does not remember its position on the screen and also not its size (fullscreen or smaller) which should be normal behaviour of windows programs. This is not only for the new exe-version, but also for the earlier versions who needed Adobe Air being installed. It’s not a big issue, but a bit inconvenient.

I’m not sure if I should be surprised or not, but it does work under Wine as well. On Ubuntu 18.04 I installed the system default wine via “sudo apt install wine64”, downloaded https://www.systemed.net/potlatch/download/Potlatch_3_Windows__2020_12_07.zip and ran it with “wine64 ./Potlatch.exe”. I was able to load a GPS track and edit https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/95649903 (despite the os field on that changeset saying Windows it was running under wine).

There seems to be a font issue (whatever font is used in the “GPS / My Tracks” dialogue causes the characters to appear as splodges as if the desired font is not found). That may be trivially fixable; I haven’t looked yet.

For completeness, " sudo dpkg --print-foreign-architectures" does show “i386” on this machine. I don’t recall adding that manually but may have done at some point in the distant past.

I have been getting the alerts from Adobe lately about the EOL for Flash Player, and have just now found this page.

Correct me if I’m wrong. My understanding is that I should go to https://www.systemed.net/potlatch/download/ to download a file to install a new program called Potlatch 3, which will run independently of any browser (like JOSM). I have other questions, which might get answered once I install, but for now I have one question: Should I download “Windows application” or “Windows application (CPU rendering)”??? (I haven’t a clue what the difference is!)

Thanks

Your Village Maps

I didn’t hear anything, but went ahead and downloaded the Windows version (not the CPU rendering version, whatever that is). I unzipped it, clicked on the folder, and clicked on the .exe file. I got some advisories and I answered in the affirmative to continuing to run the program, and the window opened. I didn’t see any way to get started though (but it looks my question was answered recently above). After a minute or so, the window disappeared and a note from Norton security popped up in my lower right corner. It deleted the .exe file! It is no longer in the folder!

So now what do I do about this?

Norton deletes the .exe (or moves it to quarantine) because it has no certifcate and flags it as dangerous. So you must learn Norton to keep it’s hands off from the Potlatch .exe. By the way, the Windows 10 built-in Windows Security alerts on the lack of a certificate (the program is unsigned), but gives you the choice to ignore the warning and continue the installation.

As far as I have understood the difference between both vesions for Windows is optimized rendering (translation of map data to visible pixels on the screen) for display controllers embedded in the CPU (i.e. Intel Graphics) or an external more advanced display controller like nVidia or alike.
My laptop has both types of display controllers and I tried both versions. There is no difference visible on the screen, but my feel is that the CPU-version behaves more smoothly while panning the onscreen map (zoomed in far enough for detailed editing) with the mouse.

How to force Potlatch3 to start a new changeset?
After editing for a first session on osm.org, P3 creates a new changeset. However after shifting the map on osm.org to a new unrelated location for a next edit-job, and having pressed the “Edit” button in P3 again, it appears that P3 does not close the first changeset and no new one is created. So the result is that unrelated edits are collected in the same changeset, which should not happen.
Question: is there a way from within P3 to close the current changeset and start a new one? Or should the browser take care of that after pressing the “Edit” button on osm.org? Now only the map data of the selected area are downloaded to make them available to P3.
What I have found the only way to force P3 to start with a fresh changeset is closing (using the upper right red button “X”) the program and restart it and repeat this for each new edit session for which you want a separate changeset.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong?

Press “c”. I’ve always used that on the web version too.

Thanks, I’ll use that next edits :slight_smile:

Yeah, if you dont know some of the keyboard shortcuts now’s the time to do it!

Thanks for the refresher… :confused: Wiki, wiki, wiki